I am all for the drop of the penny, but with a marketing perversely centred around ending prices with “99” that’s going to prove to be difficult, or messy, or both.
llm politics tubesWe are finishing watching “Tōkyō Tarareba Girls” (★★★★☆) with just one episode left, so I feel confident on my rating. Seeing it as entertainment, without putting too much thought into it, the series is OK. If I pay attention, though, I see a side of Japanese society in it that I don’t like: employers taking advantage of female employees, men cheating, women saying “marry, and you won’t have to work”, and other minutiae.
japan netflix seriesIf you go to school, or work for a school (staff, or faculty), you can get a year—plus a month—of Perplexity Pro, if you sign up using my referral link. Doing so will also grant me an extra month. A win-win!
llm techFinally, today I became the “proud” owner of an AirSense 11 CPAP machine. I have heard wonderful things about what a machine like this does to your sleep, so I am looking forward to getting used to it, and reaping its benefits. Mind it, using it is not a choice of my own; my doctor strongly recommended I do. So, here we go!
health me
I am all for the drop of the penny, but with a marketing perversely centred around ending prices with “99” that’s going to prove to be difficult, or messy, or both.
llm politics tubesThese are two little nuggets I have under this domain, which I had forgotten about but found earlier today while cleaning old staled DNS records. Both safe to execute, I promise. The first:
dig +short txt badhorse.netbros.com | sed 's/[\" ]//g' | base64 -d
And the second, similarly:
dig +short txt poem.netbros.com | sed 's/[\" ]//g' | base64 -d
When it comes to encryption, I have always used PGP, now GnuPG. All my files, now stored on Apple’s iCloud, are encrypted with it. Using that tool has widthstood the test of time. Lately, mostly because of size (program and key), portability, and lack of dependencies, I have been considering re-encrypting everything with age. My only worry is, will age widthstand the test of time too?
cryptography techYeah… no. Call me skeptic, cynic, hopeless, non-believer, whatever you want, but I don’t think this is how is going to pan out.
“With trillions of digital workers and robots entering the economy, a tenfold increase in GDP represents a very conservative estimate of how much full automation could increase economic output. If this modest increase were reflected proportionally in US tax revenues, we could resolve all current Social Security funding shortfalls, lower the retirement age to 18, and increase the average payout to over $150,000 per adult per year.”
➝ Via Hacker News.
llm rants via“It has become a tired adage, but nonetheless true. The world’s poorest countries will suffer the most from climate change despite being least responsible for it.”
➝ Via The New York Times.
Update: 07 Nov 2025 @ 11:33:06
Bill Gates agrees. In 2021 he, too, wrote:
via weather“It’s deeply unfair that the people who contribute the least to climate change will suffer the worst from its effects.
[…]
Rich and middle-income countries are causing the vast majority of climate change, and we need to be the ones to step up and invest more in adaptation. The world’s poorest deserve our help, and they need more of it than they’re getting.”
Omoiyari is the Japanese concept of anticipating the needs of others and acting on them with genuine, selfless care. It’s more than just being polite. It’s a deep, intuitive form of empathy where you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, observe the situation, and take quiet, thoughtful action to ensure their comfort or happiness without being asked, thus creating harmony in your shared environment.
Wish I could find a book encompasing all the Japanese concepts. Reach out if you know of one you could recommend!
japan philosophyItadakimasu, a phrase used in Japan before, and sometimes after, eating which translates as “to humbly receive”. It’s mean to thank, and show gratitude to, everything and everyone involved with the meal being consumed.
“It is meant to honor all: from the natural elements that supplied the ingredients, the people who grew the produce, to the ones who prepared and cooked the meal, etc.”
Generally it has no religious connotation today, but Buddhism is behind its origin.
japan philosophy
Watching “Call me Chihiro” (★★★★★) for the third time felt like watching it the first time. I like that movie so much! It is sad but, at least to me, also hopeful, heartfull, sweet, and real. I strongly believe we all need a Chihiro in our lives.
japan movies netflix“Romantics Anonymous” (★★★★★) was warm, sweet, without intrigues, suspense, nor sadness. It truly was a delight to watch. From it:
“Sarang: It’s the feeling of wanting to bring more happiness to the one you love.”
Though sarang (사랑) means “love” in Korean, they gave it the above meaning in the series. Anyway, watch it, and you will live that feeling too!
japan netflix seriesI came across Joey Yu’s blog entry today, which lead me to a 4 years old post on Reddit. I subscribe to r/Stoicism, but missed this post. That, though, is irrelevant; I have seeing it, and read it now. I share the OPs approach.
philosophy tubes“Everything we see around will cease to exist one day. Everything. All those great historical names, all your colleagues, everyone you look up to, everything. Your lifetime is nothing but a microscopic speck of time when taking into account all of the Universe’s history. Don’t spend your valuable and finite energy and time on comparing yourself to others.”
More than 30 people arrested because sport’s betting, and rigged poker games. Some of the details are truly something!
interesting tubes“In some of the rigged games, the poker chip trays had hidden cameras that could read the cards on the table. Sometimes, the cards had markings visible only to people wearing specially designed contact lenses or sunglasses […]”
It’s Claudine’s birthday again, happy birthday, Claud 🎂🥳🎁🎈! I first wished her a happy birthday in 2022, and every year since. Time sure flies, yes? Cheers to many more to come!
birthdays claudine friendsIt is the season of the “AI” backed web browsers (or should I say “Chromets”). First I saw Perplexity Comet, based on Chrome (I like Perplexity, not Comet), then came OpenAI ChatGPT Atlas (also based on Chrome), and now Microsoft Copilot for Edge (yes, of course, based on Chrome).
llm tubesAs I finished the note on Crocker’s Rules, I came across Radical Honesty, which I think is pretty neat too.
thoughts tubes work“The Radical Honesty technique includes having practitioners state their feelings bluntly and directly, even if it may be in a way typically considered impolite. Avoiding all “white lying” is said to lead to a more truthful relationship with themselves and others.”
Having always liked/wanted a direct communication at work, that is, preferring that people “gets to the point” in the most efficient manner, coming across Crocker’s Rules is never too late.
thoughts tubes work“Crocker’s rules encourage being tactful with anyone who hasn’t specifically accepted them. This follows the general principle of being ’liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send’.”
I came across this on Hacker News. Am I weird for feeling “itchy” at the lack of consistency? I mean, Bash, Python, and Ruby scripts—for what I saw. I would have done them all in Bash or, say, Python. Ruby (eww!) would have never crossed my mind.
➝ Via Hacker News.
tubes via“Leaving aside the idea of access to any form of content being conditional on the use of a proprietary browser, which is a particularly horrid 1990s throwback, I’m going to call this day 0 of an experiment in shifting the funding model of journalism from adtech to agentic AI.”
➝ Via Heather Burns.
llm tubes viaGoogle Finance Beta, yet another Alphabet beta service that will have many adoring fans, and then one day be killed. Yeah, no thanks.
google tech“… we are seeing declines in human pageviews on Wikipedia over the past few months, amounting to a decrease of roughly 8% as compared to the same months in 2024. We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, especially with search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content.”
I think this is actually good. That I know of, Wikipedia doesn’t serve advertising. Having a lower traffic means slightly less expenses, right? I am not stopping using it. Wikipedia is one of the few tools I use for research.
tech thoughtsFollowing what it can be considered a trend around here now, Horsie and I watched “Jason Bourne” (★★★★★) last Saturday night. Sad to say good bye to Matt Damon. We think he is, and will always be, the Jason Bourne.
moviesOpenAI released ChatGPT Atlas today, or yesterday, I am not sure. I gave it a try, under macOS. Without watching their video—because, you know, “ain’t nobody got time for that”—I didn’t realise it is a browser. It wants to be your browser, the default one. That pretty much killed it for me. I still tried it, of course, that’s how I found out that it was a browser, with some “more”. I didn’t like the way it renders web pages, so another notch down for me.
Maybe it will work out for others; it didn’t for me. I am not moving away from Safari for anyone. I would have preferred it to be a Safari extension instead, but even though, I don’t feel like sharing that much with that company.
llm techAs a side twist to yesterday’s Amazon outage, and, perhaps, unrelated, I woke up this morning with an extra 127 unread old emails on my iCloud+ inbox. Emails I had already deleted, or archived. Not a warm fuzzy feeling, at all.
amazon apple techEleven years (11!) after Google bought Nest they have finally integrated it on Google Home. There is no longer a need for having the Nest app installed, all can be done via the Google Home app now. Eleven years!
google tech